


mercy

by Askance



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Reverse Big Bang Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 23:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6028966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing Sam asks for, when he prays Dad's rosary, is the same thing he's been asking for since he was twenty-five: to be human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For this round of the [Reverse Big Bang](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/) challenge. Livejournal masterpost with [quickreaver](http://quickreaver.livejournal.com)'s art is [here](http://steeplechasers.livejournal.com/109193.html)!

Here's the cost of purity.

* * *

 

He dreamt of Her—at least, that's the only way he can comprehend it, to stay sane about it. He dreamt of Her above him, poised as if to kiss him, suspended on the air, so brilliant and unthinkable that he can't even properly describe Her now, in the daylight, with the rain outside. Hair he recognised; a face he knew. But somehow porcelain, affixed, a mask hiding something underneath—but She spoke in his mother's voice and he couldn't help but break, listen.

 

Sam sits on the edge of the bed, feet bare on the cold cabin floor. Through the window across the room the trees are smudged a thin green-yellow. There's nothing lighting the sky but a pale, pathetic sun, washed down to nothing. Somewhere far away it's thundering, but not here, yet. Every part of him—the indentations of his ribs (he lost so much weight; he always loses weight when he's sick; it drives Dean crazy), the imprint of his hipbones, every part of him softened by morning shadows—maybe it was a fever dream. He feels the soft flesh of the insides of his forearms experimentally. It's cold.

 

He doesn't feel like he can get up until he understands. He's trying desperately to remember what She said. The cabin is dead quiet—nothing to hear but the rain outside, nothing to hear but the faint ghost remnants of her voice—Mom's voice. Mary's voice. Somewhere in his brain.

 

He feels almost without thinking underneath the pillow for Dad's rosary, pulls it out. Turns the dark red beads, like spheres of blood, over in his hands, hoping, maybe—something will make sense from them.

 

One thing he remembers: just a brief snatch of the dream.

 

_I I I have been listening._

 

He doesn't know what it means. The dream woke him early in the morning before the pale pathetic sun had even tried to rise and he's been awake ever since, sitting here, bothered by it.

 

Sam rubs his face. The rosary beads bite into his skin. He gathers them up into a loose tangled ball and pushes them back under his pillow.

* * *

 

Dean called the night before to say that he wasn't sure when he'd be back. Whatever had intrigued him so much in Louisiana turned out to be bigger than he thought. But Sam suspects that he mostly called to worrywart about him. Every other question was a  _how are you feeling?_ disguised as something else and Sam is pretty certain his  _fine! I'm fine_ in response to every one did absolutely nothing to convince his brother. And it isn't the whole truth anyway. He and Dean have both come down hard with pneumonia before; it's something he's relatively used to. He still feels weak. Has a feeling this cough is going to last a few months. Still has that pain in his chest when he breathes in hard. But compared to how he was a week ago, he's stellar. Picture of health.

 

Lonely, sure, out here in the woods, with Dean a few thousand miles away. But Dean doesn't need to know that.

 

Sam opens the kitchen window to let the cool autumn rain wind in, just enough to freshen the place—it still feels like a sick-room though he's been recovering for a while now. He fills the coffee pot with water and rests his elbows on the sink, his chin on his hands.

 

Now that he's actually awake—or more so than he was before—the dream feels far away; earlier he'd been thinking of how to break it to Dean, but now that doesn't seem like an issue. It was just a dream. A beautiful dream, a breathless one. But he's been sick, and it's nothing new. His dreams have always been fucked up coming off a fever.

 

It's not going to get much brighter out today; Sam turns on the standing lamp in the living room, lowers himself carefully onto the couch to wait for the water to get hot. He coughs. Hates it. Every hack comes out of him like a knife. He rubs his chest beneath the black hoodie Dean left for him, pulls the sleeves over his hands.

 

The coffee maker's beeping wakes him up minutes later—he hasn't been able to shake the fatigue, it seems—and he trudges back in to get the brew going.

 

The cabin doesn't get much service. Local channels. But it's Sunday, and he knows there'll be at least one thing on he'd like to watch.

 

Sam doesn't know the preacher's name, and doesn't particularly care. He found the televangelism channels two weeks ago, right after Dean left, and only watched on a whim, and now he doesn't think he can stop. He doesn't really listen to the sermons. Just sits on the couch,  cupping his coffee in his hands to warm them, eyes closed, letting the crackling static television audio roll over him. The same old shtick,  _Jesus loves me this I know;_ my neighbour and your neighbour and golden rules, the occasional burst of glossolalia; even the fire and brimstone doesn't faze him as much as he'd thought it would.  It's old, familiar, comforting, that someone, even if it's just a suited-up probable con artist in a superchurch, is talking about God in good ways.

* * *

 

He doesn't think about Her until night comes again and he's halfway through the beads of Dad's rosary. Something else Dean doesn't need to know about—that Sam finally looked up how to pray one a while ago and has been trying to say one every night. He isn't feeling so good about God lately, but he figures the Virgin Mary's a safer bet. And it doesn't hurt that her name is Mom's, too. Double intercession, maybe.

 

He tries not to ask too many questions. The only thing he asks for is the same thing he's been asking for since he was twenty-five.

 

Sam hits the third Our Father before She comes to mind again, and he pauses, resting his hands and the rosary on the edge of the bed. They look more than ever like beads of blood in the light of the single lamp on the night-stand.

 

_I I I have been listening._

 

Sam rubs his thumb across the icon of the Virgin at the rosary's base, silver, worn-down. She looks back up in static piety, her tiny hands folded. She'd looked like her, in his dream, and equally like Mom.

 

But that seems typical of dreams.

 

He finishes the prayers perfunctorily, stumbling through the Hail Holy Queen, like always—never quite got the hang of that one. Slips the beads beneath his pillow and climbs up under the covers.

 

His phone lights up on the night-stand just as he's getting settled—a goodnight text from Dean, and, of course,  _you ok?_ Sam shoots back,  _just great, goodnight,_ and puts it screen-down, pulls the blankets up over his shoulders.

 

It's stopped raining. The only sound there is now is the dripping of water from the rooftop into the wet leaves on the ground outside.

 

Usually Sam falls asleep to the sound of Dean breathing. But there's none of that here. Dean is in Louisiana, worrying about him. And he's alone, feeling increasingly like a hermit in the desert, with all the beads and the sermons. But there isn't much else to do out here. Not much else that's comforting the way Dean's mother-hen presence would be. Sam refuses to feel guilty about it.

* * *

 

This time She sits, at his feet, and it feels less like a dream when he pushes into it. She startles him; he nearly bangs his head on the headboard in his rush to sit upright.

 

_Hello,_ She says, in Mom's voice. 

 

And She is Mom. Or at least it is impossible to tell the difference. Sam supposes he has to be dreaming—his heart isn't squeezing itself inside-out with grief, the way it usually does when he sees her face. Or maybe he's just too hyper-aware that the way She looks is not the way She is.

 

She's got Mom's face—younger than she had been when she died, but unmistakable. Framed in the blonde hair Dad always praised as her most beautiful feature. She's got Mom's voice. She's wearing red, Her hair bound up in a veil the colour of leaves in deep summer. But Her eyes are deeper than Mom's eyes ever were. Something about them makes Sam's hair stand on end.

 

_Who are you?_ he says. Is grateful he's still got his wits about him, to some extent.

 

She smiles. It's the most beautiful smile he's ever seen. He almost wants to cry. It's such a blunt and sudden emotion that it catches him completely off guard.

 

_I I I have been listening,_ She says.

 

Sam hesitates. Bites his lip. The room is freezing. She's glowing from within, a light that rolls in waves across Her face and down Her body.

 

_Mom?_ he says.

 

_She,_ says the Woman,  _and she and she._

 

_What does that mean?_

 

_I I I have heard you praying,_ She says. She makes a tiny motion of Her hand and his rosary is in it, dripping between Her fingers, liquid in Her light. She looks at it with something like sadness. It's so painful to see that he can feel his heart beating faster, his chest getting tighter.  _You pray so desperately, Sam._

 

_Who are you?_ he asks again. Something tells him that knowing is integral. There is no sound outside the two of them. He can see the wind tossing the dark trees out of the corner of his eye but there is no sound.

 

_God is not listening,_ She says.  _Not in the way that you wish He would. But I I I am listening. I I I have heard you._

 

She leans forward—before he can react She is holding his face in Her hand, the warmest touch he has ever felt. Immediately he begins to cry, and he doesn't know why; it doesn't well up in him like normal tears—it just happens, as if his body can't accept Her touch, as if it's reacting out of sheer confusion.

 

_Sweet boy,_ She says. Her voice has other voices underneath it.  _I I I can give you what you want._

 

He swallows. He can't look away from Her face. Mom's face. Something wearing Mom's face. This should be wrong. He should be panicking. He surreptitiously pinches his thigh, but She's still here, Her thumb dragging through the tears on his face.

 

_I I I can make you pure,_ She says.  _I I I will make you holy._

* * *

 

Sam spends a long time in the mirror.

 

He has no idea if it was real or not. If She was real or not. But he remembers every word She said, and it had  _felt—_ he had felt Her hand. When he woke this morning his face was tight. He'd been crying in his sleep.

 

The only thing he asks for, when he prays Dad's rosary, is the same thing he's been asking for since he was twenty-five.

 

He doesn't feel different. He doesn't feel—any cleaner, or stronger, than the day before. He still feels like himself: tired, sick, and always that nagging noise at the back of his head, reminding him,  _you're not human, you're a monster._ Perhaps it is a little quieter, but otherwise—it's just Sam in the mirror. Same old shtick.

 

The only thing he asks for when he prays is to be clean. It's such an old prayer that it hardly even registers as being anything extraordinary anymore. And he's always thought, how hard could it be, for God to reach down with one hand and fix him? He understands now why it had to be the way it was—why he had to be cursed, why he had to be  _different—_ and in a lot of ways he doesn't regret it. This cabin, these woods, his brother, none of it would exist anymore if he hadn't been that way. But that was years ago. Isn't it time he stopped being that?

 

Sam picks out Dean's speed-dial before he can think better of it. Leaves the bathroom to curl up on the couch. It began to storm again late in the night and all the windows are washed a blurry blue. He wonders if there's enough wood for a fire.

 

“Hello?”

 

Sam closes his eyes. “Hey,” he says. It's so, so nice to hear Dean's voice.

 

“Hey, kiddo. What's up?” He hears something being set down on the other end of the line. “You okay?”

 

Sam probably hesitates too long on that, because Dean's voice drops into serious territory almost immediately.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing.” Sam unfolds his legs, tucks his feet under the thick wool blanket piled on the other end of the couch. “Just wanted to check in with you.”

 

Dean sighs. “Yeah—this thing's gonna take a while, Sammy.” He sounds more upset about it than Sam had expected. “I'm still not sure what it is, but there's more than one, and they're only active a few times a month—something about the moon—I don't know, I'm having Cas come meet me.” He pauses. “You need me to come back?”

 

_Yes,_ Sam thinks. “No,” he says. “No, I'm okay.”

 

“What've you been doing? You eating?”

 

“Yes, Mother,” Sam says, smiling into the phone.

 

“Shut up.”

 

“I'm just resting. Watching TV. Sleeping.” Sam reaches down for the blanket, pulls it up over his mouth to muffle the cough he knows is coming in a minute. “Might have to go into town for some more food in a few days.”

 

“You okay to drive?”

 

“Dean, that truck can barely break forty. I think I'll be okay.”

 

“Look, I feel like shit for having to leave you all alone up there,” Dean says. He sounds genuinely pissed off; Sam drops his smile, leans into the blanket to cough. “You were in really bad shape, so excuse me for worrying.”

 

“I know you're worried. I know. Sorry.”

 

Dean sighs, a crackle on the phone. “Just take it easy, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Once Cas gets here we'll get this thing wrapped up.”

 

“Okay.”

 

The pause that comes next is something Sam is all too familiar with—the space in which normal families would say  _I love you,_ insurance against all manner of misfortune in the time before they speak again. Sometimes he wishes they were the type of people to say it. But he'll settle for knowing what the silence means.

 

“See you soon, Sammy.”

 

“Be safe.”

 

They don't say  _goodbye,_ either. Too much of an invitation of permanence.

* * *

 

Tonight, Sam waits. Sits up in bed with Dad's rosary in his lap, the bedroom door open, the window cracked.

 

If She is real, She shouldn't have a problem showing Herself.

 

“If you're listening like you say you are,” Sam says to the empty dark, “I want to talk to you. Face to face.”

 

The room is still.

 

He lifts up the rosary, finds the crucifix with two fingers.

 

“In the name of the Father—”

 

He pauses. Nothing moves.

 

“—and of the Son—”

 

_Come on, come on._

 

“And of the Holy—”

 

There. A faint glow behind the window that could almost be mistaken for headlights if he weren't so far out in the woods. It passes by, but Sam has seen it, and he stops, gripping the crucifix so tightly he can feel Jesus' face imprinting into his skin.

 

“I want to talk to you,” he says. “You said you could give me what I want.”

 

_Yes._

 

Her voice seems to come from everywhere at once, running down the walls, ghosting over the ceiling. Sam turns from the window, and She's there—a brightness shaped like a woman, standing in his doorway as if She had been there all along.

 

Sam gets out of bed, dropping the rosary onto the mattress. He doesn't think about what She is, what She might be. He goes to Her, stands face to face with Her, though tonight Her face is so obliterated by the light inside Her that he can't make it out.

 

“I want to know who you are,” he says, trying to keep his voice calm. He has suspicions, but he has to know. “What did you mean when you said you could give me what I want?”

 

The brightness tilts Her head, the way a mother might look, adoring, at her child; again She reaches up to touch his face. This time he tries not to shrink from Her.

 

_I I I can make you holy,_ She says. The word sends a jolt of electricity through him.  _I I I can make you the Child of God you always wanted to be._

 

Sam can feel his bravado slipping out of him faster than he can account for. He wants to crumple at Her feet, wants to cry again. She is pure light and emotion and She is overwhelming. 

 

“Why would you do that for me?” he asks, quietly.

 

He can't see Her face, but he can feel Her smiling.

 

_We reward the faithful._

 

Her hand rests gently on the crown of his head, and he feels himself sinking to his knees, unsure of what's happening, unsure of what She's doing, unsure that he isn't, in fact, dreaming, that beautiful, breathless dream.

 

_Be pure,_ She says.

 

There is nothing but the blinding brilliance of Her.

* * *

 

He wakes up on the floor, every part of him aching, and it takes five minutes for the coughing to stop.

 

When he sits up, She's gone. It's morning and there is no trace of Her.

 

Just a vague pain, like a sunburn, on the crown of his head.


	2. Chapter 2

Nothing feels different until the vomiting starts.

 

And once it starts, it doesn't stop: just before noon Sam rushes into the bathroom, that familiar wrenching in his stomach, and he's horrified to see what looks like coffee grounds in the toilet—he knows that means blood in his stomach, and immediately he thinks he should call Dean, should get to a hospital—but there's no time to stop and call anyone. No sooner has he spent a single minute looking at the blood than more comes up.

 

He's never felt so sick in his life. He can feel how weak and brittle his knees are, can barely hold himself up over the bowl, it's like some violent force has taken hold of him and punched upward. It just won't stop. He barely has time to breathe before his stomach is heaving and blood is filling his mouth again. He must throw up nine, ten, eleven times, all in quick and awful succession.

 

And then, as soon as it came, it stops—Sam dry-heaves one last time, and thank God, nothing else comes up. The toilet looks like a crime scene. He can feel blood coagulating on his teeth. The feeling almost makes him retch again, but he manages to fall backwards away from the toilet, leaning against the claw-foot bathtub, trembling all over.

 

He takes deep breaths—turns to spit bloody saliva into the bathtub—reaches out for a wad of toilet paper to clean his face. His hands are shaking, his stomach still fluttering, but he feels like he's just vomited up the entire last year of his life, and all of it was blood.

 

Sam gets to his knees, pulls himself back toward the toilet.

 

He has to go to the hospital. This is bad. Something inside him is bleeding, and fast. He doesn't know how much he threw up, but it looks like too much to brush off.

 

But when he stumbles back into the living room for his phone to call Dean, he pauses, feeling something akin to dread prickling at the small of his back.

 

There's no signal, but there's a text in his inbox with no number attached.

 

_I I I keep my word._

* * *

 

He doesn't go to the hospital. By the time he gets back into the bathroom to clean the rest of the blood from his face, every trace of the sudden, violent sickness has disappeared.

 

He sits on the floor in the bedroom, with a cup of water balanced precariously on the carpet in front of him.

 

He thinks he knows what She meant, but he has to be sure.

 

Sam has known for a long time that his powers didn't just vanish somewhere along the way. But he's been terrified to try to use them. Even Dean doesn't know that they're still there—still rattling around in the back of his skull, begging to be used whenever a demon crosses their path, whenever an obstacle separates him from a victim or a monster or his brother.

 

They're still there. Or they were. He doesn't know. She promised to make him pure. There's only one way to know whether or not he actually is.

 

It's mildly horrifying, to reach back into himself for them, to try and put himself back into the mindset that had allowed him to use them in the first place. It feels too familiar, too good. He tries to fight past the urge to panic and drop it—opens his hand palm-outward toward the glass of water, squinting, trying to will it to tip over.

 

There is nothing.

 

He closes his eyes, squeezes them, thinks harder. Pulls on the black threads that have been hanging in his mind, yanks them outward. They're still there, he can feel them—as inherent in him as his blood and bone—but they won't respond to him—it's like they've frozen. Died.  _Tip it over._ He waits for the surge of adrenaline into his outstretched hand, the electric  _pop_ of power leaving his fingertips—

 

He opens his eyes, and the glass is still upright.

* * *

 

The sun inches down the sky and Sam is in a daze. He can't sit still—he feels like an idiot, treading the same path over and over into the carpets around the house, wandering from room to room, but the idea of sitting down or going to sleep makes him jumpy.

 

He can't stop looking at his hands.

 

When the sun goes down he'll call Her, demand an explanation—if he can fight past the overwhelming wonder of Her presence, that is; but he doesn't trust what happened in the bedroom. Won't accept that he's clean, that Azazel's blood is gone, until She confirms it for him.

 

He feels giddy, and also extremely sad; his emotions can't seem to level out. He's shaky, anxious, should eat something, but he's not hungry. Dean's voice could settle him down, he thinks, but the signal still hasn't come back to his phone, and this should worry him more than it does.

 

For a while Sam stands outside on the porch in his bare feet, trying to breathe normally, watching grey clouds skid across the sky. There won't be any stars over Whitefish tonight.

* * *

 

He doesn't need to call Her; She's there when he goes into his room not long after sunset, as if She has been waiting for him, and immediately the feeling of unreality sets in, the dreamy uncertainty of being in the same room with Her.

 

Sam stands in the door, eyeing Her warily.

 

“What happened to me this morning?” he says.

 

She isn't too bright to look at now. Her face is Mary's, Her eyes those same deep, unknowable things. She holds out her hand as if to gesture him forward but he stays put.

 

“Am I really—” Sam swallows. He remembers this feeling. In the seconds before the doctor had told him Dean's heart was unfixable, that there was nothing left to do but make him comfortable—that creeping sense of impending doom; he has it now.

 

_Clean?_ She says.

 

Sam can only nod. There are rays of gentle light emanating from Her head that flare softly when She smiles.

 

_I I I keep my word,_ She says.  _Of course you are clean._

 

“How do I know I can trust you?” he says. “I don't know what you are. I don't know where you came from. How do I know this isn't a trick?”

 

_Do you trust in God?_

 

Sam swallows.

 

“I don't know.”

 

_Do you trust in Heaven?_ She stands. He can see, where he hadn't before, Her bare feet, his mother's feet, cut and bleeding, pierced with shards of light.

 

“I don't know,” he says, feeling that he should back away, suddenly afraid of Her in a way he hasn't been until now.

 

_Haven't you been praying,_ She says,  _for the intercession of a Mother?_

 

He thinks of the bloodlike beads he's been clutching every night for so long.

 

“You're not my mother,” he says. She is coming closer, and the closer She comes the more he feels his eyes begin to sting.

 

_I I I Am that Am,_ She says,  _and so many more._

 

“You're not God,” Sam says. He can feel his knees buckling, tears beginning to form. His body can't hold up when She's near. It wants to break, go limp. “You told me—you told me you weren't. You said He wasn't listening—”

 

_God the Father. No._ She doesn't touch him, and he's devastated, somehow. Has to focus so hard to keep upright.  _But the Holy Ghost—_

 

“—You?” 

 

He can barely speak. He wants to tell Her to back away. He can't breathe. His veins feel like they're full of fire. He reaches out for the doorjamb to steady himself.

 

She seems to understand, and recedes, Her light fading, Her face coming starkly into view— _mother._

 

_I I I have interceded for you,_ She says, gently.  _You are pure. You are clean. You can live now, Sam._

 

“Am I—” 

 

He's going to faint.

 

_Yes,_ She says, with all the tenderness in the world.  _Yes._

 

She vanishes in the instant before his knees buckle and the floor rushes up to meet him.

* * *

 

At first he thinks it's the sound of his phone going off—some alarm he hadn't meant to set. A distant hum like several people talking at once, coming down to him where he lies on the floor.

 

Sam peels himself off the carpet, rubs sleep from his eyes.

 

Morning again. No sign of Her. He must have fainted and then stayed there all night.

 

Groggy, Sam gets up, fumbles for his phone on the night-stand. But the screen is blank; no alarm, no calls. He has a signal again, and a text from Dean, dated two days before; too late to respond now. If anything he'll get chewed out for not replying.

 

But the noise is still there, so it can't be coming from his phone. Maybe the TV, or a radio.

 

It sounds—rhythmic. Like chanting, almost. And when he comes out into the living room, the TV is off, and so is the radio in the kitchen. No tell-tale static from anywhere.

 

He leans out onto the porch; maybe it's coming from campers in the woods, or someone's truck parked in the trees. But it doesn't get any louder nor does it get any softer, and the only sound in the woods is the sound of the wind.

 

Sam looks up at the dark skidding clouds and goes back inside.

 

It's not chanting. He sits on the couch, still, trying to figure out which direction it's coming from. It's singing.

 

Slowly it fades, until it's indistinguishable from the hum of the generator out back, and his phone is still in his hand.

 

Sam looks at it.

 

A significant and unfamiliar part of him doesn't want to tell Dean what's happening. He knows he should—knows throwing up blood and having visions is something he'd want to be told about.

 

But is it any of his business? He doesn't seem to care whether or not Sam's got that blood in his veins; to him Sam is just Sam; but Sam can't think that way, not when the issue is so intimate and close at hand. He's clean now. Or so She said.

 

Dean doesn't need to know. Not unless something goes wrong. And why should it?

 

He puts his phone to the side, to quell the temptation, and turns on the televangelist.

 

He hasn't had to cough in a while.

 

For most of the sermon—upraised arms, bolo tie, women raising their hands palmward to the sky—Sam lets his eyes droop, lets the voice fall over him, lets the words go in one ear and out the other. Nothing special here, nothing for him, nothing he can't find for himself, but comforting, in its way—until the preacher, blurry in Sam's eyes, steps back from the podium, and the big, brassy gospel singers make their way before the cameras, all white smiles, decked in blue and gold—

 

It feels like his head is splitting open, and before he can figure out what's going on he's doubled over in the most excruciating pain, clutching his skull, ears pounding full of blood, and the sound of a hundred thousand voices  _singing_ —

 

—louder than he's ever heard anything, he knows his eardrums are going to burst, he can feel his nose start to bleed, for an instant he thought maybe something had exploded outside but it's so clearly a song, words he doesn't know, voices he doesn't know, and it's not coming from the room, it's coming from  _inside his head._

 

It goes on for a full minute that feels more like a full month, and when it stops the silence is so deafening that it seems to suck into his ears and he feels his eardrums pop violently as if thirty-thousand feet above ground, and his stomach heaves and he retches up stomach acid onto the rug at his feet.

 

Okay. So maybe Dean does need to know.

* * *

 

“What's wrong?” Dean says, and Sam isn't sure how he thought he was going to hide this from him in the first place. Two days without a word and unanswered texts—he's surprised Dean hasn't already shown up on the doorstep, reeled back by sheer worry.

 

“Nothing,” Sam says, aware of how like shit he sounds. He clears his throat. “Um. I think I might be, um, relapsing, or something.”

 

“Relapsing?”

 

“The pneumonia, you know, it can stick around.” He isn't sure that that's true.

 

“You were getting better when I left,” Dean says, sounding uncertain.

 

“Yeah. Uh, you know.” He coughs, for effect.

 

Dean is quiet for a minute. Then, “I should come back.”

 

“No, man.” The words are out of his mouth before he even thinks about them. Sam touches his lips, confused. “I'm fine. Just thought you should know.”

 

_No. What? I didn't mean to say that—_

 

“I can send Cas to—”

 

“ _No_ ,” he says, and this time it's the force of it that startles him. Instinctively he puts two fingers in his mouth and bites down.

 

Silence on the line. Sam turns to the dark window lashed with rain, looking in the reflection for any hint of a light, an oppressive force in the room. Her.

 

“Dean?”

 

But the line is dead.

 

He looks down. No bars. The rain begins to come down harder.

 

“What are you doing?” he says to the empty room. He can feel Her, like a pain in his bones. “Why did you do that? I didn't want to say that.”

 

She doesn't say anything. She's not here, even though he can feel Her, deeper than he's ever felt anything.

 

“Hello?” He puts his phone down, holds his arms close to his chest, feeling exposed, suddenly. “Look, you can't just drop—whatever this is on me and peace out. I need help.” He thinks of the blood, the noise.

 

But She doesn't say anything. The ache fades from his bones. The rain comes down.

* * *

 

It happens again, as he's turning on the burner for a pot of soup, and again, as he's showering—bursts of song, pure noise in his head, so loud that he singes his hand and cracks his head on the wall of the bathroom.

 

“Stop it!” he shouts, flinging the curtain back, clutching his throbbing head. “Stop it now!”

 

She doesn't answer.

 

Sam sinks to the floor of the shower, holding his head in his hands, his knees to his chest, trying not to groan out loud. It's like a bomb went off in his ear—but the hot water soothes it a little, running in rivulets out of his hair.

 

He sighs, unfolding, and reaches for the soap—

 

But there's blood on his hand. Watered down to pink, but distinct.

 

He reaches up, gingerly, probes his aching temples. His fingertips come away spotted with blood that washes away in an instant under the pounding water.

 

In the mirror it's obvious what's wrong. A dozen puncture wounds the size of pinheads dotted across his forehead like spider bites, bleeding thinly down his face.

 

He stands there, frozen, confused.

 

She comes out of the steam in the mirror like a breath, a dim light at his shoulder.

 

“What are you doing to me?” he says. He isn't aware of just how scared he is until his voice trembles out of his mouth.

 

She seems bewildered. He can't make out his mother's face on Hers anymore. She seems to have dropped that pretense.

 

_I I I am doing nothing to you,_ She says.  _This is sainthood._

* * *

 

The bleeding stops, and so does the singing; but he can't sleep. Checks his phone constantly for service, knowing that Dean's going to rip him a new one if he doesn't explain that dropped call. He lies awake, obsessively rubbing his head, feeling the punctures, waiting for them to bleed again, afraid to close his eyes for fear of being shocked awake by that singing again.

 

_This is sainthood,_ She had said. What is that supposed to mean?

 

Sam reaches under his pillow for Dad's rosary—holds it in his hand in the dark.

 

Who would he pray to now, if he prayed?

 

He pushes it back underneath.

* * *

 

He tries to change the channel, but it's stuck on the televangelist, in his mint-green suit under the flaring lights of the superchurch. He mutes it. The singing is not so loud anymore, but it's constant, like tinnitus—just barely audible, and omnipresent.

 

He tries to read, but he's too tired—the letters dance and waver and decay. As soon as he picks up the Bible that's been gathering dust in the side-table for however many years, the words stand out sharp and perfect. He gets through half of Genesis before he begins to feel sick again.

 

Nothing comes up when Sam leans over the toilet, but it's cool on his skin, so he stays there, resting his head on the wall. Feels a small trickle of blood on his cheek and wipes it away on his sleeve without thinking.

 

Still can't be sure this isn't all a really fucked-up fever dream. It certainly feels like it.

 

The only thing to do seems to be to pray—he doesn't so much kneel as sit down heavily on the floor beside his bed, not bothering with the ritual of the rosary, only holding it in his palms. His gut says to talk to Her but there's an equal fear in him that says not to.

 

He ends up asking for sleep, very meekly, and he gets it. He sleeps late into the next morning, full of dreams of flowers, blood, light, a thousand eyes, looking at him, a thousand mouths, praising him for things he hasn't done.

* * *

 

It seems that it will never stop storming, and despite himself Sam is getting used to the strange way things are working in this cabin. The rain, the man on the TV; a box of tissues to wipe blood from his face, ibuprofen for the headache that the singing gives him. Now that he's asked for sleep it seems he's been allowed it.

 

He hasn't seen Her in a while.

 

If this is sainthood, it's miserable. But he doesn't want to give it up. Not really. Despite the urging in his stomach to cry uncle, despite all the warnings he can hear, plain as day, in Dean's voice in his head. (There is still no service on his phone. That, almost more than anything, worries him.)

 

There isn't much to _do_ ; nothing to read, nothing to watch. When he isn't trying desperately to keep something in his stomach he's praying, comforted by the repetitious nature of the beads flowing through his hands. Meditative, if nothing else. He takes small walks into the woods, but never too far; at a certain point a silence settles on the trees that disturbs him, an absence of sound that triggers his instincts and sends him walking, quicker than normal, back into the cabin. Something dangerous out there. Though he isn't too sure the cabin isn't just as dangerous, with Her in it.

* * *

 

He comes out of the shower the next morning to see it—rays of ecstatic light, emanating from his head in the mirror.


	3. Chapter 3

He dreams of Her. A crack in his mother's face, the tell-tale fissure of something like weak ceramic. She doesn't speak. He has a gut dread of the thing that must be behind Her face. Can feel what it is in his bones.

* * *

 

Sam wakes up naked in the woods, freezing, standing barefoot in the rotting underbrush of winter, facing the forest's heaving darkness.

 

Shock keeps him standing still, until his senses come back to him. It's pitch dark. His feet are cut and bleeding and his blood is turning icy in the dead leaves underneath him. The only light is the glow above his head, and in it he can see scratches all over his arms, each shaped like a malformed letter X—

 

No, not quite.

 

He doesn't know where he is. Around him there is no hint of the light in the cabin windows. He can feel sweat crystallising on his skin. His head is bleeding, his feet are bleeding, he is covered in tiny crosses, there is a smudge of torn skin underneath one fingernail.

 

His first thought is to call for Her. Instead it's Dean's name that squeaks out from between his chattering teeth. He pulls his arms in tight against his naked body. He's going to freeze to death if he doesn't get inside. It's full December and he's dizzy and alone.

 

Sam tries not to give the name  _terror_ to the thumping of his heart in his throat.

 

Gingerly, he takes two steps in one direction—stops and turns into another—but there's no path out here, or at least not one that he can see in the light of the halo affixed to his head. The scratches are starting to itch. He leans against a tree for a moment, unnerved by the yawning blackness of the woods at his back, before him, all around him.

 

“Help me,” he says, hoarsely, and then, louder, “Hey! Help me!”

 

No answer.

 

He can feel his heart beating fast. Sinks down onto his haunches in the rot. Clasps his knees to his chest, shivering. It's a little warmer, but not warm enough; he has no idea how long the night is going to last.

 

Sleepwalking. Sleepwalking out into the wilderness. Not a good sign.

 

“Please,” he says, unable to keep his teeth from rattling in his skull. “Please show me how to get back.”

 

She doesn't speak, doesn't show Herself, doesn't seem to respond in any way, but when Sam pulls himself to his feet again, he feels a push in one direction, so bare it might only be instinct; but he follows it, scraping his hands on tree bark when he stumbles, thinking not of the cold or the wet or the snow that's beginning to fall on his blood-matted hair but what the hell he's going to tell his brother when he finally comes home.

* * *

 

He must collapse on the rug behind the front door, because when he comes to again, all he sees are Her feet, pierced with shards of light, watery and translucent, right in front of him.

 

_You have seen wondrous things,_ She says.  _Wondrous things in the woods. They called to you in the night._

 

He doesn't remember any wondrous things. The arm laid on the floor in front of him is covered in tiny scabs.

 

_Give thanks. This is ecstacy,_ She says.

 

She's gone before he can retort— _that wasn't ecstacy, I nearly died._ None of this makes any sense at all. None of this feels like sainthood. Not the way he pictured it.

* * *

 

The rest of the day is a trance. He can't sleep, can't eat. When he musters up the courage—he has to call Dean, he has to come back, he can't handle this one his own like he thought he could—his phone has disappeared. The mint-green televangelist's face is frozen in a smiling close-up, a flickering fluorescent nightmare at his back.

 

He can feel Her watching from a distant corner while he puts on his boots, pulls his sleeves down over his crusted, riddled arms. Dean left a winter hat behind; it'll do to cover the holes in his head.

 

_Where are you going?_ Her voice drips from the windowsill, pooling on the floor.

 

“There's no food left,” he says, knowing the lie won't fool Her. He just wants to get out of this cabin. Any of the giddiness or serenity he'd felt after throwing up the blood is gone.

 

He's scared, now.

 

This isn't what he asked for.

 

_You don't need food, Sam,_ She says, mildly.  _God provides._

 

“I need pain meds too.” 

 

_God provides,_ She says, more firmly.

 

“I'm getting stir-crazy.” He gets up before She can protest again, finds the keys to the old truck Dean left for him in an ashtray on the front counter. She doesn't follow him onto the porch, into the truck, but he can feel something watching him, a dozen eyes on his neck.

 

Taking the road down to the highway is more of a relief than he could have ever imagined. The peaks above the lake loom large in the distance, and he turns the truck's nose eagerly towards them. He feels like he can breathe for the first time in days.

 

The halo still surges dimly in the rear-view mirror, but he knows no one else can see it. It's an intuition.

 

Maybe he won't go back. He'll find a phone in Whitefish and call Dean and then keep driving, meet him halfway. He'll still look like shit, still be bleeding and cut-up and full of bad dreams, but at least he won't be in that claustrophobic cabin with Her.

 

He can deal with this sainthood thing if it's on his own terms. But he can't stop thinking of the crack in Her face. He can't say he trusts Her.

* * *

 

Sixteen miles out of town, he starts to feel the urge to vomit, and swallows hard. He's almost there. He'll pick up some Pepto or something, find a wastebasket if he has to, but he will not throw up in this car.

 

It's suspicious, the feeling. He hasn't eaten all day. There's nothing in his stomach to retch up.

 

Fifteen miles out any hope of keeping it behind his teeth goes out the window. He pulls over, the truck leaning dangerously into a ditch, the empty winter highway stretching past behind him, and opens the door, arms wrapped around his stomach.

 

He won't go back. She can purge and punish his body all She wants, he isn't going back—not without Dean or Cas, not without information about what's happening to him beyond Her cryptic bullshit.

 

He feels something cold and slimy in his throat and that's enough to bring it up.

 

Sam closes his eyes tight, glad for the loud, angry wind to drown out the sound.

 

But there's no vomit on the ice when it's finished coming up.

 

Just a scattering of silver coins.

 

He reaches down, hands quivering even in his gloves, and picks one up. It's dry, flat, beautiful—and ancient; it came from his throat.

* * *

 

She doesn't show Herself until after dark, when he's back from Whitefish, drawn toward the woods and the cabin by a string behind his ribs that he can't name or resist, and when She does he holds out a handful of the silver coins, pushes them into Her face.

 

“Stop fucking with me,” he says. “Either tell me what's going on or take it the fuck back.”

 

_Careful,_ She says. It's the first time She's sounded anything other than friendly. Where Mary's eyes had been now there are only dark holes—Her face looks more and more like a mask, like something about to splinter and crack.

 

“This is what you call sainthood?” He drops the coins on the floor at her translucent feet.

 

_Most wouldn't question a blessing like this one,_ She says. 

 

For the first time he feels—threatened. He's aware, suddenly, of how big She is, how much She fills the room.

 

_Saint Dymphna,_ She says, moving closer, and Sam takes a step backward, feeling suddenly not at all as brave as he'd been a moment ago,  _was beheaded, by her father. But she did not die. Do you see? And her head rolled across Belgium, stopping in every town, imploring the people to kill her, end her suffering. But God had smiled on her. Do you see? Her head rolled into the sea and sits there, at the bottom, gathering silt, home for fish—_

 

Her face, the face She has been wearing, Mary's face, comes off in two pieces. 

 

There is nothing underneath but a void.

 

_And Saint Therese—do you think she died? She is in every rose that ever blooms, and dies with every one. Birth and death and resurrection, forever. What could be more beautiful?_

 

“Leave,” Sam says, whimpers, but She's only filling up the room, he feels he could fall into the void of Her face. There is something back there that he doesn't want to see.

 

_Sainthood is suffering,_ She says. Her red robe falls open—he can see a pregnant belly, sliced open, fully empty, a yawning cavern of a womb—She leans down, face-to-face with him, until he is staring into Her void, unable to move, unable to speak.  _What else could it possibly be? It is not a thing you choose. This is given to you. I I I have given you the greatest honour humankind can have. I I I expect your_ gratitude.

 

“I don't want it,” Sam croaks. His eyes are burning. He can barely squeeze his voice past his tongue. “I don't want this.”

 

Somewhere deep inside Her a mouth opens. He doesn't know how he knows this. Only that it is full of terrible teeth. She is the biggest thing that has ever been. He's made a mistake—betrayed Her—she is the  _angriest_ thing that has ever been—

 

“I just wanted to be human,” he says. He can feel blood pouring from his temples, welling in his eyes. “I just wanted to be  _human_ —I didn't want to be this—”

 

She screams at him. It's a banshee noise, the most horrible thing he has ever heard. He can feel his bones shaking, his heart pounding. She leans so close that he fears Her void will swallow him, that he'll topple forward into Her empty face—

 

“Take it back,” he says, and then louder, feeling a rush of fear and adrenaline running up his spine. “Take it back! I don't want it!”

 

Her scream grows louder, exponentially so, until he feels his knees starting to buckle, his eardrums straining to pop.

 

“Make me human!” he screams back, reaching back to the wall for stability. “Make me human! That's what I asked for!”

 

She rears back, like an angry animal, plunges a hand into her breast, and something wet and hot and solid slams against his feet on the floor. A roar of light that blinds him—

 

And then She is gone.

 

The room is empty. Freezing. Moonlight moving.

 

He's shaking so violently he could topple over.

* * *

 

When Dean is asleep, two days back in Whitefish, exhausted from the drive and from mothering Sam half to death, drilling him for information on the last two dreamlike weeks that Sam refuses to give, Sam takes it into the woods.

 

His feet know where to go to take him to the place where he woke, naked, that night. The icy rot underneath his boots is slippery and treacherous and silent. He carries it in his hands, away from his body, afraid of looking too closely at it. It was hell, hiding it from Dean. And he has to get rid of it.

 

He isn't bleeding anymore. No explosions in his skull, no more disappearing cell phone, no light around his head. She did what he asked Her and took back all the rest—rageful as She was. He's human, and once the scabs on his arms heal no one will ever be the wiser as to what happened to him here.

 

It's an incredible feeling. Makes him think of how clean it feels to breathe in frozen air—all the time, deep in his bones. He doesn't want to admit it, but he's a little grateful to Her, despite it all.

 

But he has to get rid of what She left behind.

 

In the woods, the dark woods, under a black wheeling sky and branches dripping with treacherous ice, he crouches down, breath frosting in front of his face, and begins to dig with his bare hands, peeling back layers of rotted leaves and frozen dirt, past thin weedy roots and the broken shells of long-dead cicadas, until he's made a hole the size of his fist.

 

He hefts it in his hand—the thing She tore from Her breast and hurled at his feet. An expression of Her rage. A six-chambered mutant thing, black and twisted meat—Her heart. Her  _how dare you._ It's still beating, pulsing in his hand.

 

Sam puts it into the hole. Scoops dirt and leaves and roots over it, tamps it down with his foot. Stands there, hands in his pockets, watching the earth seem to breathe over it, heaving up and collapsing, two or three times, until it stops, and the silence of the woods leans in. And it's over, as far as he knows.

* * *

 

Dean's too fast asleep to react when Sam climbs into his bed next to him, and Sam's grateful. The heavy warmth of Dean's body is the most grounding thing he can imagine. It's reality, the sound of his breathing in his sleep—the closest he's felt to the surface since the first symptoms came on.

 

He twines himself, the way he used to do as a kid, legs around legs, face in the back of Dean's neck, closes his eyes, takes one of those deep, clean breaths. Human, he thinks. Human.

 

Outside, the quiet moon. No rain anymore.


End file.
